Conventionally, synthetic images which are referred to as “mosaic art” (mosaic images and photo mosaics) are known as expression methods for posters, web pages and the like used for advertising new products or announcing events.
For example, the mosaic art can be generated by selecting in advance an image showing a picture (design) which is the source of the mosaic image, and generating divided areas by dividing the source image into a plurality of areas. Further, this method includes generating a mosaic image by extracting a plurality of images which are similar to color information (such as chromaticity data such as RGB) of the divided areas and match the divided areas, and combining the extracted images in a tile pattern. By this means, a mosaic image which imitates a source image is generated.
Patent Literature 1 discloses a technique of generating a mosaic image provided to a terminal device, using an image posted by a user. With this technique disclosed in Patent Literature 1, a mosaic image comes closer to completion a little by little in proportion to an increase in a number of posted images.